Impenetrable

How to live in the world

The Sea of Ice by Caspar David Freidrich (1823-24)

The trick with saunas is not ignoring the heat, but letting yourself be penetrated by it and giving yourself over to it. I’m sitting in a sauna in Hackney and watching the sweat drip off my face, onto my stomach and legs, and thinking about this conundrum. To tolerate the sauna is to accept that sweat is streaming down my face and the bench under my thighs is too hot, really, to touch, and to accept that the heat is entering into me as much as I am entering into the sauna. 

The man lying opposite me sighs deeply and crosses his arms over his face, grimacing as though in pain - I understand him, I’m in pain too. It hurts to be present in my body and present in the world around me and my skin often feels like scant protection. I wonder what it would feel like for my skin to burn off, leaving me as raw as meat. My therapist would say this is an intrusive thought and indicates how I feel exposed when I let my guard down. I tell my therapist to get out of my head and focus on my breathing and the feeling of heat burning down my throat in a way that, in any other situation, would signal danger. I am good at responding to danger, but I sit still and let the feeling pass instead until all that remains is the heat.

The man is attractive and I keep stealing glances at his near-naked, sweating body reclining on the towel. It’s a classic Dad Bod with strong arms and wide chest complimented by a firm stomach that suggests both strength and a weighty presence in the world, like this is a man who could both hurt and protect me. This is not a sexual sauna, but I wonder what would happen if I moved to touch him on his glistening skin. It is unfathomable to me that he would respond to my touches - after all, my skin has burned away, leaving me looking something like a charred piece of meat. Nobody wants a blowjob from that.

The heat is suddenly unbearable and I stagger out the sauna cabin door into the bright light of the courtyard, where people are laughing and climbing into communal plunge pools. Looking down at my hands, I’m astonished to see my skin is still intact under the sunlight, wet and bright from sweat. I look back at the man in the cocoon of the sauna, and his skin, somehow, is also still intact despite the heat that seemed to burn mine off. Perhaps he is someone who does not feel vulnerable or exposed, like a real person who can tolerate the world as it is and all the pain that comes with it. Maybe I’m projecting and he’s just a man lying in a sauna on a Thursday afternoon.

The trick with the plunge pool is to not ignore the cold, but let yourself be penetrated by it and give yourself over to it. The moment you resist the cold, tensing up and breathing from the top of your chest, you’ve lost. You cannot fight the wall of cold that comes up to meet you any more than you can fight the world turning - it will seep into your bones in seconds and nest its way into your organs, it can only be welcomed.

I put one foot in and gasp, and force myself to put the other in and climb down the short ladder until the water is up to my shoulders. I remember the last time I felt like this was new year’s day on the Isle of Man over a decade ago, while snow was still on the hills, and hundreds of us ran into the freeze of the Irish Sea. Back then, I had to get out as soon as the water went above my stomach because I found myself unable to breathe, running back to shore while all the braver boys swam to the lifeboat docked in the bay. 

I am brave this time and give myself over to the cold, taking deep breaths into my stomach and overriding my natural instinct to climb out. My friend is climbing into the pool opposite me and I laugh at their reaction, they’re as shocked as I was by the freezing water. “Wim Hof it!” I shout and we both laugh, and again: “Come on Mx. Hof!” I’m becoming one with the cold, breathing steadily and letting my hands go red and numb. My skin is staying on my body this time, despite being penetrated by the freezing water, and I wonder if I am able to tolerate pain like the man in the sauna could after all.

My friend has their eyes closed and I look at them focussing on their breathing, their entire mind given over to the task at hand. They seem to be truly present in the world in a way that I am only beginning to understand, like their soul and their body are in the same place at the same time. Consciously and deliberately, I think about how much I love them. The cold is suddenly too painful and I climb out, step by step, onto the plastic matting surrounding the plunge pools, feeling dizzy with adrenaline and delight, my whole body wet like a fish caught on a sunny day.

The trick with being in the world is to not ignore the pain, but let yourself be penetrated by it and give yourself over to it. There is no other way to be in the world than this, and it takes well over a lifetime to get used to this fact. I stand under the outdoor shower in my swimming trunks, feeling the cold water run down my front and the sun’s heat on my back, my body no different from the man’s next to me or the woman’s behind me. 

I imagine someone is looking at me and wondering what it’s like to be a real person in the world, with your soul and your body occupying the same space at the same time. I imagine, too, that someone is looking at my body with desire and whether I could bear anyone touching the thin layer of skin I am wrapped in without it coming off. Increasingly, lately, I am thinking that the answer is yes.

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Looking at Porn is written around my full time job. I hope you enjoy it. You can follow my Instagram here and you can email me at robinccraig@gmail.com if you like. I recently wrote a piece for Vittles on the role of food at the end of life, which you can read here.